I have some idea of what a blocker is by the name alone, and I assume they are some type of mod, but I have no idea if they are actually that or how to get them or install them if they are something other than a mod
The farms in this mod may not be plobbable, and there may not be any mods that currently exist that have "ploppable farms," but I don't see any reason why there cannot be. There are ploppaable buildings such as skyscrapers, transit stations, churches, museums, schools, there are ploppable parks, flower gardens, plazas, and other "city beautification" objects. There are ploppable lots to build things such as rivers, lakes, etc. I have 2.3G of mods that do those things (though I don't use all the ones I have downloaded), and there are a lot more (several hundred G's, if not actual terabytes) on the STEX, sc4devotion, and other places. I see no reason why there couldn't be ploppable lots that look like farm fields/pastures or at least parts of farm fields/pastures.

I just want to point out 2 things that as far as I can tell have not been pointed out (though perhaps you have found these on your own) for your "utility" cities.
There is a power plant called the "cosmic neutrino power plant" that produces more than enough power and water for a grid even much larger than the one you showed in your OP, that way you won't have to build a bunch of power plants and water pumps in your "utility cities."
Link to power plant: https://community.simtropolis.com/search/?&q=cosmic neutrino power plant&type=downloads_file
For the trash, there is a hyperspace garbage dump here on the STEX as well that gets rid of a bunch of garbage so you do not have to zone a large portion of your "utility towns" as landfill zone. They cost 9.7 million simoleons, but your original post makes it seem that you are not adverse to using cheats, and there are plenty of money cheats, such as the "extra cheats.dll" mod for the "moolah" cheat, the infinite money park that I use, and others as well.
Link to Hyperspace Garbage dump: https://community.simtropolis.com/search/?&q=hyperspace garbage dump&type=downloads_file
Brian Christiansen

I am attempting to build (as best I can) the city of Tar Valon from the series "The Wheel of Time." I have in previous posts described the modifications I have made and why in previous posts.
I got the diagonal streets working. What worked ended up being something I thought I had already tried, but apparently not.
I also got the "diagonal" bridges working, but what I ended up doing was not exactly how it was described in the readme file, but I did get the diagonal bridges made.
As for the city itself, it looks OK. If I figure out how, perhaps I will make it look more like the "artist's rendition" on the fan page.
Right now, I am working on the mainland cities at the end of each bridge. Perhaps somewhere in the books, these cities are described, but in my rendition, they are going to be farming communities that supply the city, and perhaps produce enough to export stuff to the outside world.
However, I can't just zone them as farm regions, that would give me modern looking farms, and I don't want that, I downloaded and installed a mod called "early 19th century farms" which might look a bit more like what I want, I am actually not sure. But even if they did, I think they would add the farms into the "mix" of farms that are put in agricultural zoning, so even if that is what it does (so far I have been unable to actually determine what it does do), it won't really help unless I can figure out a way to get it to just use those farms.
What I want to do is lay out the roads for my peripheral towns, then in each sector that is delineated by roads put one of the barns from the "AD 1100 castle set", then on the rest of the farms, plonk down what looks like farm fields. Obviously, for the farm buildings, I have the "AD 1100 castle set," but the best thing I can come up with for the fields is the open grass area from the parks menu, and that doesn't look a whole lot different from just doing nothing.
I originally thought the "early 19th century farms pack would allow me to do this, but I downloaded it and all it's dependencies, and it does not put any thing in the menus, or at least nothing that I can find. I think, but am not sure, that it puts 5 new farms (Acorn Acres, Burlesque Ranch, Cabin Creek, VanBuren Poultry, Weeping Willows) into the mix of farms in the agricultural zoning assortment.
I also want some of the areas I have delineated by the streets to be pastures that have 5-10 horses or cows in them. I downloaded a mod the produces cows or horses, but I cannot figure how to stop it after it generates 5-10 animals. If I simply destroy the animal generating plant it destroys all the animals generated as well. I think I saw a few other mods either here or on SC4devotion that look like they might be promising, but I don't know.
Brian Christiansen

I thought I had tried what you are describing, or at least what I think you are describing (starting the diagonal section not right at the starter piece), but perhaps not. I will give it another try and see what happens. I will also see about making the diagonal bridges.
Brian Christiansen

I did make a region that is more the size that is described in the wiki fan page, but when I started actually making the region, I decided it was just too big to be manageable, at least using the methods I could figure out. The "neighborhoods I am making are 6x6 tiles, and I did some calculations, and there would probably be between 1000 and 1600 of them in Tar Valon alone.
The reason this is too big to be manageable is in the way I am making the "neighborhoods." If I could simply zone them as residential the way I would do a regular city, the "Tar Valon Region" that I made is actually a fairly small one.
However since I first lay out the roads then individually put the houses, getting about 9 to a region if they are "regular' houses, and perhaps 2 if they are fancy mansions (so far the best "fancy mansion" I have found is Faneuil Hall from the landmarks menu). I cannot simply zone the region as residential because so far I have not been able to find a mod that puts down medeivel style houses rather than modern style houses, or even if making such a mod is even possible.
In my revised area, it looks like there might be close to 200 "neighborhoods," which is at least manageable. Since I plan to use several of them for an "Aes Sedai Center" (I have not found any reproductions of the White Tower, so I currently plan on using the Palacio Real, or something "better" if I can find it as the centerpiece and several "fancy mansions" (Faneuil Hall or something "better" if I can find it) to serve as the novice, accepted, and the various Ajahs quarters), and plan to make several of the neighborhoods in the outer cities into fields or areas for animals, that number is somewhat reduced even more.
I hope I have sufficiently explained my decision to greatly reduce the scale of the area.
I did not know there is a mod to make diagonal bridges. Where is it? In the STEX? SC4Devotion? Some place else?
I also made all my streets straight N-S or E-W because I can make regular streets/roads diagonal, but when I put down a SAM starter piece to make the road into either a cobblestone or dirt road, I seem to lose the ability to make it diagonal.
Brian Christiansen.

I am attempting to build the city Tar Valon from The Wheel of Time series of books. Instead of describing it again, I will just link to my original message, then describe the changes that I have made since I actually tried starting to build it. Original post:
Since I need to build each neighborhood building by building and cannot just zone the area as "residential," my original map was just too big to manage. There would be 100s, if not close to 1000 neighborhoods(in both Tar Valon and the surrounding cities) to place houses/props in, and that is just "too many." Under my new design, there are probably still "too many," but it at least looks manageable. In my original design of the area, the city was approximately the size described in the fan site, about 8 miles long, and about 2 miles wide at the widest point. In my new design, it is about 1.5 miles (2.5K) by .6 miles (1k), and it, the surrounding towns, and Dragonmount all fit in a 4kX4k square. My plan for accomplishing building it is pretty much the same as described in my original post. Here is what my current map looks like. I have laid out the streets and put dragonmount there too.
Brian Christiansen

I think this is the correct forum for this. I am attempting to build a custom region based on Tar Valon from the "Wheel of Time" Series. I built a 16kX16K (approx 10miles square) that looks like this:
It is based on the map and dimensions given here: http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/Tar_Valon
For the buildings and roads, I cannot use just the regular zoning because that would put modern looking buildings in the mix (or at least I cannot figure out a way to prevent that). In fact, except for running the program for 1 or 2 game months to get money from an infinite money park, most of the game will be "played" on "pause." Perhaps the architecture of the buildings in "The Wheel of Time" is described somewhere in the books, I really can't remember that specific detail, but it strikes me as "midievel," and I have found the following to put in the appropriate scenery:
Buildings: for "mideivel style" buildings, I found the following here on STEX: Castle 1100 ad set, castle walls, and I think another that I can't remember the name of. Faneuil hall is not "mideivel" architecture, but I think it looks cool as a "rich merchants mansion" or "town center" when surrounded by stuff from the "parks" menu (the best I have found is either the medium flower gardens, open grass areas, and the tree fillers from the FLOG country club set). For the walls surrounding the city, I think I can use the stuff from the "castle walls" set.
White tower: No one has made a "ploppable" reproduction of the "White Tower," or at least I have been unable to find it if they did, but I think I can make a "Aes Sedai Center" using some of the stuff from the landmarks menu and the parks menu. For the central building, I could use one of the many castles on the STEX (or sc4devotion) or the Palacio Real (I think). Then I could use various of the other buildings from the landmarks for the quarters of the various ajahs and the novice and accepted's quarters.
Roads: I think that modern roads or streets would not right, but that within the city, the roads should be cobblestone or red brick, and the streets outside the city should be dirt roads, and I found a mod that can do that (again, can't remember the name). It took me a while to figure out how to actually use it, and I still have not figured out how to make those types of roads angled, so for now I will sort of have to make my roads straigh N-S ir E-W, and can't make them diagonal like in the picture from the fan site.
Bridges: I don't think it is possible to make bridges that are angled like in the picture on the fan site, so I will have to make the bridges straight N-S or E-W. The best I have found so far are covered cobblestone bridges, I think. I am not sure, but I think I got those bridges from the add-on that gave me the capability of making the cobblestone roads in the first place, I think.
Dragonmount: According to the maps in the books, Dragonmount is a bit to the west of Tar Valon and I will make that using the god mode tools.
Farms: I am not sure if any of the countryside surrounding the city is farms, but I would like to put a few there anyway. I am not sure how to do this however. I can't just zone some of the area as agricultural, because that would put modern barns and grain silos and whatever on those farms. If there is some mod that makes the agricultural zoning put only "medievel looking" farms, I have not found it. If there is another way to build them, I am not certain how to do it. For the buildings I can use some of the buildings from the "1100 AD" set, in fact some of them are specifically labeled as barns. For the fields, I have not idea what to do. The best I have figured out so far is to use the open grass area from the parks menu.
If I finish this sometime between now and the end of the universe, I will post pictures of it. I also belong to a facebook group that dicussed the Wheel of Time novels, so I might post it there as well.
Brian Christiansen

I don't know exactly why my last post about cheat codes was double posted. The duplicate seems to be deleted now, but it was not because of anything I did. I do not know if it was automatically deleted because it had the same title/content as my first message, or if Corinamarie manually deleted it. If she deleted it, thank you, because I have no idea how to do that.
Brian Christiansen

I am not a purist, and use the "infinite money park" as my money cheat. I have also experimented with some other cheats ("weakness pays", "howdryiam," "youdontdeserveit"to get the private schools, business deals, whatever, before I "earn" them and probably others), and there seems to be a penalty associated with some.
For example, the business deals (prison, toxic waste dump, casino, etc.) can "save" your city by turning a negative cash flow to a positive one, However, if a player uses the "you don't deserve it" cheat to get all the deals at the beginning of the game, it might make things actually worse because the deals have negative impact on desirability and/or demand and/or mayor rating. They need to be built as far away as possible from development to minimize their negative impact. They also should be destroyed as soon as you have a cashflow that would be positive without them to get rid of their negative effects.
Once I used the "howdryIam" cheat, and it did indeed, get rid of the water requirement, and buildings that were more than low density/low income developed (at least as far as I can remember) without being watered. However, I was constantly fighting fires. I usually play by zoning an area, putting in bus stops and other perhaps other public transit, putting in schools and other services, then letting the game run in cheetah mode to let the area develop. If I used the "how dry I am" cheat, a fire would break out, I would call the trucks to put out the fire, then sometimes another fire would start, sometimes almost instantly. Even if I used llama speed or even turtle speed, there would be more time between fires, but I still spent much of my time watching the firemen spray water on the fire and not as much time zoning a region or letting it develop.
I suppose there is no actual penalty for using the "weaknesspays" cheat, but if one is OK with using a money cheat, there are ones that are a lot better (the "infinite money park, which is what I use, the moolah command, with the extra cheats dll, money trees, probably others). If one is not OK with using cheats, the player probably won't use the "weaknesspays" cheat anyway.
If however, a player does use the "weakness" pays cheat because the city is in the red and is losing money, $1000 probably won't help very much. If the player uses "ctrl-v", <return>(or whatever the combination is to use the command several times) to get, say $100000, that will probably only stave off bankruptcy for a few games years unless the player gets the city making money or uses the cheat over and over again. And again, if the player needs to do this very often, he or she should use a "better" money cheat such as the "infinite money park," money trees, the moolah command, something like that.
The penalty, I suppose, is that the player is constantly using the code to get the coffers in the black rather than playing the game.
Brian Christiansen

From the fansite I linked to or another fan site, or has someone made an actual SC4 "Tar Valon" region. If I do make my own custom "Tar Valon" region, I will probably use that map or a similar one, and will use the proportions described on that site.
Brian Christiansen

Well, like I said, I just took a quick look, and I have done some mucking about on SC4devotion, but I have not even decided if I will make such an area, and if I do, it will not be for a few weeks at least before I even start.
Brian Christiansen

I am not quite sure if this is the right forum to put this on, but the other day I got to thinking about how in SimCity 4 when you generate a new region, the same one is generated every time (if the "water" region" is generated, it is the same as the "plains" just that the sea level is high enough that everything is underwater. I suppose the "intent" by the game creators is that then each city can be custom-terraformed to whatever you want it to be. Each city can be individually terraformed, but the region as a whole cannot, or at least I cannot find a way to do so.
I got to wondering how such a region as "Fairview" (one of the pref-fab regions) or one of the "real regions" (New York, London, etc.) could be made. According to this article: http://www.sc4ever.com/knowledge/showarticle.cfm?id=1103, making a custom region is not very difficult, at least in principle. All you need is a config.bmp file which is prettty easy to understand and delineates the border between cities. Since that article describes what is needed in a config.bmp, I won't reproduce the description here.
The other thing that you need is a map of your area, and the requirements of that are described in the article, but it is basically a grayscale relief map of your area with black (monochrome value of 0) showing the bottom of the ocean, white (monochrome value of 255) showing the tops of your highest mountains (Everest, maybe), and a nochrome value of about 84 indicating where sea level is. Topographic maps (maps that show elevation) could be used for this, and the USGS has mapped, I think most of the United States, and those maps are freely available online. I would suspect that there is an "EUGS" (European Union Geologic Society) that makes such maps of Europe available as well, and probably geologic societies that make such maps for most any area in the world that you want, so you could get a topographic map of probably just about any area in the world, trace over it in the appropriate greyscale colors to make a custom region.
I think the article describes how to do at least some of this in photoshop. I figured out how to do this in gimp, and can try to describe it in a follow up if any one wants me to. I think MS paint, at least newer versions (I am not sure if the version that comes with XP or earlier has the necessary capabilities to do this). I don't know about other drawing programs like photoshop elements.
Suppose for example, one wanted to make a "fantasy region" that isn't any real region on earth, there are articles out there about how to draw a "fantasy map," and though I could not find an article that specifically told how to draw a "fantasy relief map," there are plenty of articles describing relief/topographic maps that it would not be difficult to convert your "fantasy map" to a "fantasy relief map" (time consuming perhaps, but not "difficult"). How "interesting" your map is, depends, I suppose, on your imagination and aristic ability.
For example, if you wanted to make a region that represented "Randland," the fictional setting of The Wheel of Time books, first you would have to convert the map of Randland (there is one in every book of the series, and I think they are available online as well) to a relief map, which would probably be very time consuming, but I looked, but someone was nice enough to do this already, and there is one available online, and I don't think it would be very difficult to covert it to the appropriate grayscale colors.
However, making the entirety of Randland into a region is very impractical because according to what I can find, the area of Randland is ~3500 miles on a side, which is over 5000 kilometers, making the total area over 25 million square kilometers. According to the formula given, "Take the size of the region in kilometers, multiply it by 64, then add 1" that is 5000*64+1 = 320,001, which means that your map would need to to be 320,001 (at least) pixels square.
On my computer, the largest number that you can even type in is 262,144 when specifying the size, and that gives a warning that the size of the bitmap will be 320 GB. My computer has 8 GB, a processor, that by today's standards is between mid-level and slow (I buillt my computer about 5 years ago), and uses onboard graphics, so even if GIMP could use "all" of the spare memory (memory that isn't used by the OS, etc.), the biggest it could handle is perhaps 1-2% of that size, and that would probably stretch it to almost the "breaking point." Even the most tricked-out gaming computer on the market probably could at most handle 5-10% of that size (I am just guessing, but I really doubt it is more than that).
The number of cities is also a problem, even if the cities were as large as possible 4K*4K, there would be 1.5 million cities. Even though many of them would under the Aryth ocean, there would still be close to a million of them, so only a select few could be played anyway.
A better solution would be to focus on one particular area, such as Tar Valon(http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/Tar_Valon), which is on a large island in the middle of the stream. The city is ~8 miles or ~12K or long, ~2 miles or ~3K wide at its widest point and of course there is the actual river (needs to be quite large to have an island that big in it, so a "bounding box" that is 16K X 16K would work nicely (a region does not have to be square, I don't think, but the formula in the article on how to make a custom region seems to be written with a square region in mind). According to that, the map would have to be 1025 pixels square. Actually making a grayscale bitmap that size, and looking at its properties reveals that a file that size is 5.9mB, which can probably be relatively easily handled by a 10 to 15 year old computer.
The other problem is the buildings. The Wheel of Time Books use an architecture, that is, as near as I can determine, "mid evil" style, so unless there is a mod some where that makes "mid-evil" style buildings, the buildings would look kinda out of place. I did a quick search on the STEX, and there is a "Castle wall" set, so would probably help the city look a bit more authentic, and the cobblestone paths from the NAM might help as well. I only took a quick look, so there might be other mods available here or elsewhere to make Tar Valon look a bit more authentic. Maybe there is even someone out there who has actually done something like this.
Brian Christiansen

Yes, I suppose I am playing a bit fast and loose with the terminology. In what is the "official" language of the game, the overall region is called the "Fairview region" with each district (central producer, residential district x, industrial district y, farms 1) being a city when using the "official" terminology of the game. However, and I think I describe it in more detail in my post "Fairview, Linux vs. Windows," I am developing the "Fairview region" as "Fairview city," with several different districts (industrial, residential, and commercial), that is why each city (or district) has the same mayor. I think what I am calling a district is what you would call a "sector," and what is called a "city" in the "official" terminology ofthe game. I think I used the term "farm region" a couple of times in my original post, but I did not mean the whole "Farview Region," I just meant my small experimental farm district(or city or sector), "Farms 1."
Brian Christiansen

Hmm...that still raises the question (I hate it when people use "beg the question" when what they mean is "ask the question" or "raise the question," but that is a rant for another time) of where the farm workers are coming from. They aren't coming from the residential areas in my farm town, they aren't coming from the residential areas that are connected to my farm region (although I have it set up so that my residential areas have high desirability such as education, etc., and they probably would not want farm jobs in the first place). There are no residential houses on the farms themselves, or at least none are pictured, so where do the farm workers live in the first place?
Brian Christiansen